+Points to ponder

1. Can you think of a time that you ‘honored the Lord with your lips, while your heart was far from Him’? What helped you get properly oriented?
2. Is all tradition in worship bad? If yes, what replaces the old tradition(s)? If no, how do we determine what stays?
3. Have you found yourself living an ‘If I just’ piety? What do you think the root of that is/was? As in Q1, what helped you to get reoriented?

+Sermon Transcript

**Grace, mercy, and peace be unto each of you from God our Father and our Lord and King, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Let us pray:** O God, You make known Your almighty power in Your merciful compassion: increase Your mercy towards us; that we, being eager for Your promises, may inherit the treasures of heaven; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

The second temple: richly appointed. The stones are huge, culled from a nearby quarry, fashioned, formed, and dragged uphill to the construction site. It was impressive! It was a work of architectural art. After all, generations of Pharisees had neglected the welfare and care of their parents in order to erect and expand it. Their Corban – their offering above and beyond the tithes required by Mosaic Law - their offerings, again, at the expense of properly honoring their mothers and fathers, is what decorated that temple. The first temple, Solomon’s, had been even more impressive. Larger stones, purer gold, the pillars of Lebanese cedar, the silk and brocade even more elaborate. But today, both are gone. Only the Western Wall of the second temple still stands. It’s called the Wailing Wall – for obvious reasons. So much for the traditions of the temple and its worship.

Yet, our worship may often be the empty tradition of human temples.

Both in Isaiah’s day and Jesus’, God’s people made their temples into idols. The Lord, speaking through Isaiah describes it thus: “… this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from Me …”

The feasts, like Passover, drew huge crowds to the temple, but they were empty, corrupt. Jews would wear the words of God as frontlets on their heads - literally, not spiritually as described in Deuteronomy chapter six. Jesus pointed this out; He said of the Pharisees, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long …” In other words they would have God’s word ever before them, but they would outright ignore it. As the saying goes, ‘it was all show and no go!’

And so, because they were so off track, they could not understand what God was doing for His people, they could not understand His plan of redemption through Christ.

Isaiah explains the consequences of the people’s lip-service to God: “And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying, ‘Read this,’ he says, ‘I cannot, for it is sealed.’ And when they give the book to one who cannot read, saying, ‘Read this,’ he says, ‘I cannot read.’”

As God’s Word became like a sealed book, the faithless became the clueless. Again, clueless as to the life and worship to which God was calling them.

And as they spiraled downward, the next step of such empty temple tradition was for people to set up their own little “temples” – theirs was idolatry of the heart.

Jesus quotes Isaiah as He reproaches the hypocrisy of His pharisaical accusers, saying to them: “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

Within the corridors of their heart temples, they thought they were wiser than God and more discerning than His Word. Their hypocrisy echoed the opening of our Psalm of the day: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.”

Dr. Luther’s analysis of the Isaiah passage points out that Christ cites Isaiah [here and in Matthew 15] adding the word, “in vain.” He says, “With this single word [Jesus] embraces this whole chapter and every attempt of the ungodly, who have zealously crucified themselves with their labors, who exercise themselves with vigils, “who draw near to Me in order to obtain Me,” and yet they are blinded. Why? Because they are hypocrites and self-righteous. [To] draw near properly refers to the state of mind of those who are externally zealous and glittering in appearance and boast that they are next to Christ. But they “draw near to Me” in this way that “they honor Me with their mouth and lips.”

Beloved, in all honesty, we each have our own “heart temples,” built on our traditions rather than God’s Word. “If I just …” is the mission statement of our idolatry. If I just sing every hymn and song; If I just ignore those dusty old hymns and songs; if I just say the words in the liturgy without a thought; if I just get rid of those old prayers and petitions and worship ‘from the hip;’ if I just keep my head down and keep quiet; if I just join every activity at church or worse if I just stay away from every church activity; If I just do a devotion every day; If I just pray at every meal; If I just … if I just … The truth is, seeking to live a life of piety – turning the entirety of your life toward God – is not wrong or bad … until it becomes, “if I just;” and “if I just” is a killer because we look to our own works, we measure what is pious with our feckless and fickle emotions; we measure with our intellect as if it is greater than God’s and the seat of our faith. That is to say, our faith is seen as a mere intellectual exercise.

But, at some point, God will destroy such tradition and raze its temples. God’s people could not hide their wickedness from the sight of the Lord. He saw their hypocrisy. And not just in Biblical times but even today, God sees our hypocrisy as we have heard in our Gospel lesson.

And if we could exercise a modicum of candid introspection, surely, we could see it too. We all, at times, allow, “if I just” to have its way. We have let our emotions get the better of us and we have thought more highly of ourselves than is called for. We have determined and defined what is pious or what our personal piety will look like regardless of Christ’s commands and claims on our lives.

God is not satisfied with our stuff, with our hands, or with our lips. He wants our hearts and minds – the very core of our being. And so, God would do a spectacularly spectacular thing.

Enemies would raze the temple in Jerusalem to the ground – Babylonians the first temple, Rome the second. Isaiah warns that God would exercise His wrath against His own holy habitation! He says, “therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.”

He continues, “Is it not yet a very little while until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest?” The great cedars of Lebanon (the temple) will be humiliated and this illustrates the coming Divine reversal, when the exalted will be humbled, and the humble will be exalted.

But let us not too gleefully anticipate the coming reversal for all those hypocrites we know. The fact is that each of our “heart temples” deserve eternal destruction!

But God will also surely raise up a new Temple, which is His Word, not empty tradition – not a capricious “If I just.”

And what good news Isaiah proclaims: “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.”

Out of gloom shall come joy; the poor shall exult in the Holy One of Israel – Christ Jesus. He is the tradition that never distracts from God’s Word, for He is the Word Incarnate. He is the true Temple made without hands, razed in His crucifixion. There, the Father did something spec­tac­u­larly spectacular – He handed over His Son to destroy the wisdom of the wise and foil the discernment of the discerning. And He is the Temple raised back to life.

JESUS IS THE TRUE TRADITION IN WHICH THE CHURCH EXULTS.

“In short,” our Confessions say, “the worship of the New Testament is spiritual. It is the righteousness of faith in the heart and the fruit of faith. New Testament worship sets aside Levitical services… It teaches that people should worship in spirit … and by faith.” Amen.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

Sermon Study helps – Concordia Pulpit Resources (Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, Missouri) [Vol 31 Pt 3 YrB – electronic version] Rev. Seth A. Mierow, pastor, St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Indianapolis, Indiana Isaiah 29:13